After his father returns from treatment for addiction, highschooler Vish is uncertain what the future holds. It doesn’t help that everyone seems to know about the family’s troubles, and they stand out doubly as one of the only brown families in town. When Vish is mistaken for a relative of the weird local bookseller and attacked by an unsettling pale man who seems to be decaying, he is pulled into the world of the occult, where witches live in television sets, undead creatures can burn with a touch, and magic is mathematical. Vish must work with the bookstore owner and his mysterious teenage employee, Gisela, to stop an interdimensional invasion that would destroy their peaceful town.

Vish is 15 and not too happy about being pressed into saving his family and town from a ghoul (Mr. Farris) who feeds on dead bodies. For those who love horror-thrillers, this novel is packed with frightening creatures, terrifying situations and mysteries that unfold one witch or attack at a time – although overall, it’s more a “thinking person’s” thriller than nonstop nail-biting.

Mr. Farris’s head was still backward, the empty white mask drooping over the loose flesh beneath it as the body kept staggering toward Matt. Matt kept typing as Farris’s melting green hand clamped gently onto his shoulder. Vish could see the slippery fingers trying to close into a gripping claw.

“Mr. Farris …is a collection of 12,506 long-dead people. People who made a very wicked deal with Mr. Farris because they wanted to live forever. And now they do, trapped inside this body he made out of their bodies: he ate a little piece of each of these people to capture them, and now they live within him… He needs an enormous amount of energy to accomplish what he promised those 12,000 souls over the years: new lives in new bodies. And it’s not the kind of power he can generate himself. It’s the kind that boils out of the core of this planet and others, the heat that life came from a long time ago.”

The plot is so packed with supernatural encounters and rules that rely on math and physics, that readers may find it confusing to navigate. Everything from time travel to exorcism gets thrown into the mix, and Vish has to think on his feet to avoid disaster. Meanwhile he gets a crush on a witch (which goes nowhere, so seems a bit pointless) and is trying to resolve family tension by seeing a counsellor in whom he cannot confide the real reason for his stress: the occult world he’s forced to tackle.

The writing is okay, but not great. The dialogue and plot both flow except for being too clogged with details that distract and slow down the action. Cats with superpowers of perception and a determination to protect the good guys lighten things up. The 1996 setting mentions VHS tapes, old books and bands, not for any apparent reason.

Subplots touch on racism, family angst and addictions, not an obvious fit with the occult theme. But for hard-core thriller fans who like complex plots involving dissolving bodies, mysterious portals, magic coins, boiling lakes and the like, this may provide a fun, gruesome read.

—Pam Withers